


'Cause it's an effed up world, but it's a two-player game

by pennysparrow



Series: A crooked politician? Yeah but that ain't news no more [6]
Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Newsies - All Media Types, Newsies!: the Musical - Fierstein/Menken
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, American Politics, Crossover, Current Events, Don't copy to another site, Gen, Modern Era, Politics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-03
Updated: 2019-02-03
Packaged: 2019-10-21 22:21:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,254
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17650970
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pennysparrow/pseuds/pennysparrow
Summary: On Thursday, January 31st, 2019 at noon Katherine Pulitzer received a phone call.





	'Cause it's an effed up world, but it's a two-player game

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Two-Player Game from Be More Chill

On Thursday, January 31st, 2019 at noon Katherine Pulitzer received a phone call.

She had just settled in to her usual booth in the student union, her coat and backpack piled next to her as she flipped her laptop open for the first time all day. The theremin riff of the ringtone startled her and from across the booth Charlie quirked an eyebrow.

“I thought that was _Be More Chill_ ,” he said with a quirk of his lips as Kath struggled to dig the device out of her coat pocket. “Find the bad guy, push him aside!” Charlie sang along.

She threw a glare at him and swiped at the screen before putting it to her ear. The ringtone was a dead giveaway for who was calling. Kath was still mentally kicking herself for not having the damn thing on silent as she said “Hey Enj, where’s the fire?”

 _“Have you seen_ The New York Times _?”_ Enjolras asked without preamble.

Katherine sent a very confused look at Charlie. He just shrugged and put his huge lime green headphones back on over his ears. Flipping the hood of his overlarge hot pink hoodie up too. They were in the midst of the Polar Vortex and even with the heat at full blast the buildings on campus all carried a chill.

“Um, not yet. I’ve had classes all morning and literally just sat down.” Kath tilted her head and lifted her shoulder, wedging the phone between the two so that she could use both hands to type and log into her laptop. Charlie just nodded but she couldn’t tell if it was in unseen confirmation that she had indeed just sat down or along to what was likely the rest of Two-Player Game.

 _“The republican party is run by a lot of bloody idiots,”_ Enjolras informed her. She could picture him sitting on the fluffy rug in the Triumvirate House’s living room with notebooks and textbooks spread out around him and his laptop open with the article in front of him. In Katherine’s head Courf was banging around in the kitchen and blaring trashy pop music as Grantaire ran cursing down the stairs, wrapping himself in a scarf, as he feared being late to class. This image was mostly backed up by the fact that she could hear trashy pop music and R cursing in the background accompanied by a lot of banging and crashing.

“You read a lot of Brit Lit growing up, didn’t you?” Kath laughed. She was pulling up _The Times_ as he grumbled in confirmation. She scrolled briefly through the headlines before one caught her eye. “You have _got_ to be fucking kidding me.”

Charlie looked up from his laptop at that, quirking his eyebrow. Some freshmen at the surrounding tables glanced over but otherwise everyone was used to Katherine’s outbursts, even after a semester without her. She clicked on the article and turned her laptop around to show Charlie the headline: _Mitch McConnell Calls Push to Make Election Day a Holiday a Democratic ‘Power Grab’_ Charlie raised his eyebrows and shook his head as Kath took her computer back.

Enjolras snorted at her reaction. _“I told you. Idiots. Do you know how bad this makes them look?”_

Katherine was just starting to skim the article – she would give it a thorough read through too – and couldn’t help but scoff. “Do they realize he’s basically admitted to voter suppression? Like specifically democratic voter suppression?”

 _“Exactly!”_ Enjolras practically yelled in her ear. She could imagine him flinging his free arm up in exasperation. _“We are one of the only democratic countries not to have election day as a legal holiday. Which is frankly ridiculous with how low our voter turnout is and how it’s been proven that it would be higher if people had the time to actually go to the polls. The amount of people who cannot miss that day’s pay and do their civic duty is astounding and it’s ridiculous how high it is. We should have mandatory voter registration and election day as a legal holiday and companies should give paid leave for voting and we should make voting-”_

Enjolras was cut off by a call of _“Go OFF, Enj!”_ from Courfeyrac in the background. Katherine couldn’t help but grin and mentally pat herself on the back for guessing correctly that it was Courf in the other room.

“Have you read the actual bill?” Kath asked. “And tell Courf I said hi.”

Enj relayed the message and Katherine received a _“Helloooo Katherine! I miss you! Come visit soon! And bring Racetrack with you!”_ in reply. She laughed and Enjolras was definitely rolling his eyes as he held the phone out in the direction of the kitchen.

_“I’m working on sifting through the bill now. It seems like the article does a decent job of summing up the important bits. It’s a lot of campaign finance. I’m going to have Courf give it a read through after he’s done destroying the kitchen-”_

_“I HEARD THAT. I’M MAKING YOU LUNCH AND YOU SHOULD BE GRATEFUL.”_

_“-because he’s got a much better grasp of the legalize of these things than I do. From my grasp of it though it’s actually a pretty decent bill. Like I genuinely hope it passes.”_

Katherine scrolled back up to the top of the article and began to dig out her headphones so she could listen to McConnell’s speech. “I’m going to re-read the article and do some digging then. I’ll send this and the bill itself out to the chat. Skittery is like weirdly on top of campaign finance stuff, I’ll see if he can give it a once over.”

“Wow, you seamlessly went from bitching with your bestie to planning the new world order,” Charlie quipped. He had her least favorite shit eating grin on. The one that meant his tone and words were joking but what he was saying was serious. It was normally coupled with the subtext of ‘you’re being a giant ass’ or ‘stow the seriousity for five fucking minutes and be a normal human’ and while those were good reminders Katherine really hated when they had to be directed at her.

“I’m sorry,” she mouthed at him with a wince. Charlie shrugged and went back to his work. Or maybe writing fanfic. Possibly both. Definitely both.

 _“I… don’t know what if anything we’re going to do,”_ Enj said with a sigh.

“You know we really don’t have to do anything. Well you don’t, this is kinda out of your wheelhouse. If the Newsies pick it up just share it, spread it around. In the meantime, you can always call me to complain about voter suppression.”

Charlie shot her a small smile, acknowledgement that he’d noticed her taking it down a few notches and he was happy about it.

 _“Thanks Kath. I figured you’d seen it already, I didn’t mean to interrupt whatever it was you were doing to yell,”_ he admitted.

Katherine scoffed. “Enj, you’re so fine. This is what we do. Like our friendship was built on yelling about stupid politicians and the day’s headlines.”

Enjolras laughed. _“Ok. Fair point.”_

“Now, since I have you on the line you wanna fill me in on the post I saw about you nearly losing your finger at a soup kitchen? The hell?”

Enjolras groaned and began the story. Katherine settled in and smiled as she listened to her friend talk, catching her up since they didn’t see each other every day anymore.

**Author's Note:**

> \- Kath's ringtone for Enj is [Two-Player Game](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RAMHtXy8fA0) because Jehan got Enj to listen to it and Racetrack got Kath to and they both kinda sent it to each other going "US" on the same day because they're nerds and now it's their ringtone for the other.  
> \- [Here's The New York Times article](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/31/us/politics/election-day-holiday-mcconnell.html) referenced this chapter.  
> \- [Here](https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/1/text?q=%7B%22search%22%3A%5B%22hr1%22%5D%7D&r=1&s=1#toc-HFCF939CAA6204AF6B40DEAFAC99FBBFA) and [here](https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/113/hr20/text) is the text of the bill called the Government by the People Act.


End file.
